Popeye in Belgrade

Sutherland Smith James

James Sutherland-Smith has lived and worked in Serbia and Montenegro through the difficult transitions. Old states fragmented and a new Balkan political landscape emerged. He writes, not as an observer, but from within cultures rebuilding after political and social upheaval. "Popeye in Belgrade" records the aftershocks of those moral and spiritual earthquakes in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The movements of history play out in private, intimate contexts whose subtleties the poet catches with an ear and eye alert to the nuances of personal and public feeling. Political and social concerns form part of each poem's texture, as they form part of the invisible fabric of individual lives. Music and the natural world are presences throughout the collection, not as sources of consolation but as expressions of elusive otherness. They persist outside the unstable complexities of human society.

About the Author

James Sutherland-Smith was born in Aberdeen in 1948 and was educated at Leeds University. He set up the first Creative Writing Course in English in Central Europe, using writers from Britain and Ireland. His work as a Peacekeeping Manager enabled him to experience first-hand the difficult era of transition in the Balkans particularly through his close contact and work with the armed forces of Serbia and Montenegro. His previous poetry collections include "A Singer from Sabiya" (1979), "Naming of the Arrow" (1980) and "At the Skin Resort" (1999). He has published two Carcanet collections, the most recent of which is "Popeye in Belgrade" (2008). James Sutherland-Smith and his wife Viera are the principal translators of Slovak poetry into English, with a number of collections of individual poets and three major anthologies published in Britain, America, Canada and Slovakia.

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